


Writing

by indigo_blue



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Gen, Monologue, One Shot, Writer's Block
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2013-11-16
Packaged: 2018-01-01 18:14:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigo_blue/pseuds/indigo_blue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter is a writer. He's been struggling with writer's block for the past week. Day after day, he wills himself to write something that's actually good. It's a familiar scene to any author. But for those who aren't, I'll describe it to you...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Writing

Writing.

It’s a familiar scene to any author. But for those who it isn’t, I’ll describe it to you.

*

There is a desk, where the computer sits…somewhere. There _is_ a keyboard buried under all those papers. But it has lain untouched for so long he’s starting to disbelieve it. 

There are other books, piled up in their dozens. He’d searched the library for books with similar scenes to the one he was writing, looking for wording he could borrow – just to get an idea down, you understand. It had been a good idea until Rebecca came home, looked which pages he’d marked and simply glared until Peter stopped trying to explain it was only research and put the books back.

There are coffee cups, six if you’d care to count, with varying amounts of cooled coffee still in them. It was once roughly twenty-five pages worth of caffeine. Peter hasn’t cared to count. He doesn’t even notice them anymore. They have melted into the scenery that makes up The Desk and will only be removed when he realises there aren’t any more mugs in the cupboard.

There are articles he convinced himself would be useful spewing out of the printer. There _is_ a tray to catch printings, but somewhere down the line somebody seems to have put the printer on hyper drive and the papers spill out at such a rate that they miss entirely, instead landing on the floor, or the keys, or Peter’s head. Neither of them will own up to changing the printer, and neither of them knows how to turn it back.

There is a clock radio, an old one which ceased to pick up radio years ago but still shows the time. It sits there, blinking at him, shouting 16:21 in angry red LED. It has never shown a good time, a nice time, one that says, _it’s okay, it’s still early, you’ve still got plenty of time to write something today._ Peter considers it immune to all hours before 2pm.

There is a paperweight with scraps of paper under it, holding all those ideas that he scribbled down in a rush – too busy to write about it now, but not about to let _that_ go in a hurry – and then came back to it later and cursed himself for not using enough detail. How is he meant to know what _‘…oh!_ hope? Too young.’means? He would like a spike, of the kind they have in films, to stab these half-ideas onto, but he suspects Rebecca would object. She doesn’t ever come near the Desk, anyway. 

There is a plant pot, narrowly escaping the embrace of the flood of papers. It used to contain a plant, many moons ago. Now it contains oddments that Peter hasn’t even realised he’s been dropping in there; a penny, a paperclip or three, balled up post-it notes, a dice, pen lids. These things are removed from wherever they live, turned over in his hands a few times and then deposited unconsciously, whilst he stares into a world that’s entirely his own and tries to figure out how he’ll bring it to other people. 

There aren’t actually shackles tied to the chair, but that’s how Peter feels when he sits in it. The familiar mantra runs through his head; _Fingers, keys, type something. Type it now._ He can’t move until he’s produced at least a hundred words. Five hundred would be better. The house shrinks around him when he sits down to work, until it no longer contains a kitchen, or a bedroom. He doesn’t eat. He doesn’t sleep. He sees bars around him. In his world, there is nothing but the four squares of carpet on which sit the chair, the desk, and him.

There is a head-high dent in the nearest wall.

*

` And there are the words, which come into his head and then evaporate, as quick as sunlight, just as soon as he can contemplate writing them down.`

 


End file.
